Tuesday, July 30, 2013

My Sister-in-law's Husband is Going to Kill Me

     My sister-in-law's husband is actually a pretty nice guy. He's friendly, quiet, well mannered and talkative. He's careful... to the point of frugality. But who wouldn't be frugal if you'd gone through the depression with immigrant parents who came to this country just before the depression set in.

    But Josh has a side that shows up whenever I go to visit him that gets me into serious trouble. Josh may be frugal but he likes cars. Not that he buys lots of cars. He bought a Dodge Charger in 1968 and kept it. Even though he's frugal, he bought the Charger which was a very pricey car at the time. I didn't say he was poor and didn't have money. Josh just looks after his money very well. Now he's had other cars since the Charger.

    Whenever I would visit him, there would come a time when he would quietly say, "Let's go for a ride in the Charger." So he'd bring the Charger out of storage and we would go for a ride.
    
    Now Josh would always like to test the old Charger to see if it still had it's zip. He would find a straight piece of road where there was little traffic and  probably no radar and then he would put the pedal to the metal. He always wanted to see if the Charger could still do 100 mph. The road would have farm entrances and there would be cross roads. It may have been a straight piece of road but it wasn't safe at all. As Josh would get close to 100 he would watch the speedometer instead of the road. He would have to get his bifocals lined up to see the speedometer. As Josh would do this the Charger would ease over the center line. At this time I was sure  that I would be killed .
    
    So after driving for about half an hour we would come back home and Josh would carefully put the car away.

    The next time I would visit Josh, he would say again , "Let's go for a ride in the Charger." Same thing. I never learned to say no. So I guess I'm partly to blame for my dangerous ride.